Now a major motion picture Official selection: 2012 Sundance Film Festival Legendary poet, novelist, and essayist Margaret Atwood gives us a surprising look at the topic of debt -- a timely subject during our current period of economic upheaval, caused by the collapse of a system of interlocking debts. Atwood proposes that debt is like air -- something we take for granted until things go wrong. Payback is not a book about practical debt management or high finance, although it does touch upon these subjects. Rather, it is an investigation into the idea of debt as an ancient and central motif in religion, literature, and the structure of human societies. By investigating how debt has informed our thinking from preliterate times to the present day through the stories we tell each other, through our concepts of balance, revenge, and sin, and in the way we form our social relationships, Atwood shows that the idea of what we owe one another -- in other words, debt -- is built into the human imagination and is one of its most dynamic metaphors.
Payback
and over one million other books are available for Amazon Kindle. Learn more
| ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Book Description
Frequently Bought Together
Product Details
Would you like to update product info or give feedback on images?
|
Product Description
Quill & Quire
The evidence is in: Margaret Atwood simply sees more clearly than the rest of us. In her five-part 2008 Massey Lectures, the author applies her familiar cultural X-ray vision to dark material. Debt is usually regarded as bloblike, cheerless, and about as illuminating as a dungeon. But Atwood sees things in it that we don’t. What she offers us in these meditations is nothing less than a secret history of human obligation, economic and otherwise. From ancient tax collectors to the reason why “Hell is like a maxed out credit card,” Atwood exposes the debts we incur and the pledges we make in the arenas of law, business, religion, and the environment. Along the way, she examines the notion of debt as personified by key figures: literary (Dr. Faust, Shylock, the Brothers Grimm); astrological (Libra); and – most formidable of all – actual (the gossips of smalltown Ontario). At the end of the book, Atwood totes up humanity’s moral ledger and asks: What happens when we take more from the world than we give? There is a wealth of information here (puns may be unavoidable in this review), none of it predictable. As Atwood comments at the outset, Payback is not about economic data, national debt, or money management. Rather, the book is about the realities of being human. We need and want things we often can’t acquire as quickly or as cheaply as we would like. So we tap the other guy. Debt, by its very nature, is about imbalance, which leads to trouble. Atwood illustrates this in five extremely engaging and expertly crafted chapters. “Ancient Balances” deals with society’s long, bloody slog toward the rule of law and a system of fairness. “Debt and Sin” has the Lord getting in on the act: financial debt becomes a metaphor for sin and, later, an actual sin. The related essays “Debt as Plot” and “The Shadow Side” examine literary treatments of debt in the work of such disparate writers as Elmore Leonard and Machiavelli. In the last chapter, “Payback,” Atwood laments the profligacy and shamelessness of the West and reckons that, like those who sell their souls to the devil in old blues songs, we all got to pay up – soon, and big. Debt is a real killer when it is not about money. Take blood feuds, for example (one of Atwood’s more winning attributes is that she is happy to tackle a good blood feud). You hit me, I hit you. Then you hit me again, because you owe me a debt of violence, and so on. These chain reactions often spiral out of control, until everyone forgets the reasons for the original conflict and eventually acknowledges the futility of it all. Then there are debts of honour: those instances in which our egos will not allow us to accede to an insult, or a lover’s departure, or, say, the prospect of admitting failure to the American people. Atwood points out that while the antidote to blood feuds is not revenge but forgiveness, debts of honour are less tractable. They’re about pride, or patriotism, or lust, and thus are more difficult to pay off. Our biggest, most incalculable obligation, though, is a collective one to our tender planet. How we discharge our debt to nature depends on mankind learning to develop new values that will allow us to “count and weigh and measure different things altogether.” Atwood is perfectly at ease, and perfectly persuasive, in the realms of classical mythology, showbiz, literature high and low, fashion, natural history, and politics. When things threaten to get over-academic she zings in a personal anecdote, or a bit of humour, or both (cf. her brilliant stories about growing up starchy in the 1940s). When our attention starts to wander she’s right there with a gleaming observation (“How fascinating that we say a person ‘redeems himself’ when he’s been guilty of a disgraceful action and then balances it out with a good or noble one. There’s a pawnshop of the soul, it appears.”). The last section – in which Atwood escorts Dickens’ Scrooge through the Past, Present, and Future of our soiled globe – is the only one that feels less than accomplished: it’s too manic, and the laughs feel strained. But overall, Payback is wisdom we can take to the bank – even as it poses the questions destined to haunt our jittery, overdrawn era: What is the real cost of living? Can we even afford ourselves anymore? Payback reminds us that, one way or another, the piper must always be paid.
Review
...these pieces offer a panoramic look at how the concept of debt acts as a fundamental human bond and - when obligations go unfulfilled, when ledgers are left unbalanced - how it can threaten to tear societies apart. (Georgia Straight 20081008)
In Payback, Atwood freely mixes autobiography, literary criticism and anthropology in an examination of debt as a concept deeply rooted in human - and even, in some cases, animal - behaviour...Building an argument that abounds with literary examples...Atwood entertainingly and often wryly advances the familiar thesis that what goes around comes around. (Toronto Star 20081008)
Payback is a delightfully engaging, smart, funny, clever, and terrifying analysis of the role debt plays in our culture, our consciousness, our economy, our ecology and, if Atwood is right, our future. (Washington Post 20081108)
...[Payback is]...a demonstration of Atwood's ability to evoke in memorable detail our vanished cultural past, and to examine both past and present in the form of language. Writing in this mode, she's never off her game. (National Post 20081008)
...[Payback is] elegant and erudite...As one would expect from a novelist of Ms Atwood's calibre, the phrasing is polished and the metaphors striking. (Economist.com 20081008)
...replete with anecdotes and opinions, witticisms and barbs...Payback is more about economic principles, and even the market crisis, than it appears at first glance. As impressive as Atwood's intuitions, or her intellect, or even her humour, is her insistence on tracing responsibilities, and possibilities, back to those human, and thus imaginative, constructions. (Globe and Mail 20081008)
There has been much written about Atwood's 'prophetic vision' and her ability to be eerily 'prescient'...given Atwood's track record, I'm a believer...Either Atwood was born under a lucky star or she really should be moonlighting from a shady storefront with a sign that says 'Palm Readings: $25.' (Rebecca Eckler 20090209)
Elegant and erudite...As one would expect from a novelist of Ms. Atwood's calibre, the phrasing is polished and the metaphors striking. (Economist 20081001)
Nothing if not timely...Few writers are able to combine the esoteric with the polemic as [Atwood] does...darkly entertaining. (Winnipeg Free Press 20081108)
Payback is a stimulating, learned and stylish read from an eminent author writing from a heartfelt perspective. (Conrad Black Literary Review of Canada 20081108)
The lectures remind us of why Atwood has been so important to our literature. (Financial Post 20081001)
...witty, acutely argued and almost freakishly prescient...as amusing as it is unsettling. (Chicago Tribune 20081008)
...an extraordinarily vibrant Massey Lecture on debt, how it plays a motor force in much literature, in our own lives and in the machinations of the crowd we elect to govern us. (Maclean's 20081008)
"Ms. Atwood is a witty and astute writer of broad sympathy and wide-ranging curiosity, and the prose of the book, at once commonsensical and counterintuitive, bristles with insight and implication." (A.O. Scott New York Times 20120425)
A celebrated novelist, poet, and critic, Atwood has combined rigorous analysis, wide-ranging erudition, and a beguilingly playful imagination to produce the most probing and thought-stirring commentary on the financial crisis to date. (John Gray New York Review of Books 20090401)
...a fascinating, freewheeling examination of ideas of debt, balance and revenge in history, society and literature - Atwood has again struck upon our most current anxieties. (London Times Online 20081008)
Atwood's book is a weird but wonderful melange of personal reminiscences, literary walkabout, moral preachment, timely political argument, economic history and theological query, all bound together with wry wit and careful though casual-seeming research. (Publishers Weekly 20080908)
In Payback, Atwood freely mixes autobiography, literary criticism and anthropology in an examination of debt as a concept deeply rooted in human - and even, in some cases, animal - behaviour...Building an argument that abounds with literary examples...Atwood entertainingly and often wryly advances the familiar thesis that what goes around comes around. (Toronto Star 20081008)
Payback is a delightfully engaging, smart, funny, clever, and terrifying analysis of the role debt plays in our culture, our consciousness, our economy, our ecology and, if Atwood is right, our future. (Washington Post 20081108)
...[Payback is]...a demonstration of Atwood's ability to evoke in memorable detail our vanished cultural past, and to examine both past and present in the form of language. Writing in this mode, she's never off her game. (National Post 20081008)
...[Payback is] elegant and erudite...As one would expect from a novelist of Ms Atwood's calibre, the phrasing is polished and the metaphors striking. (Economist.com 20081008)
...replete with anecdotes and opinions, witticisms and barbs...Payback is more about economic principles, and even the market crisis, than it appears at first glance. As impressive as Atwood's intuitions, or her intellect, or even her humour, is her insistence on tracing responsibilities, and possibilities, back to those human, and thus imaginative, constructions. (Globe and Mail 20081008)
There has been much written about Atwood's 'prophetic vision' and her ability to be eerily 'prescient'...given Atwood's track record, I'm a believer...Either Atwood was born under a lucky star or she really should be moonlighting from a shady storefront with a sign that says 'Palm Readings: $25.' (Rebecca Eckler 20090209)
Elegant and erudite...As one would expect from a novelist of Ms. Atwood's calibre, the phrasing is polished and the metaphors striking. (Economist 20081001)
Nothing if not timely...Few writers are able to combine the esoteric with the polemic as [Atwood] does...darkly entertaining. (Winnipeg Free Press 20081108)
Payback is a stimulating, learned and stylish read from an eminent author writing from a heartfelt perspective. (Conrad Black Literary Review of Canada 20081108)
The lectures remind us of why Atwood has been so important to our literature. (Financial Post 20081001)
...witty, acutely argued and almost freakishly prescient...as amusing as it is unsettling. (Chicago Tribune 20081008)
...an extraordinarily vibrant Massey Lecture on debt, how it plays a motor force in much literature, in our own lives and in the machinations of the crowd we elect to govern us. (Maclean's 20081008)
"Ms. Atwood is a witty and astute writer of broad sympathy and wide-ranging curiosity, and the prose of the book, at once commonsensical and counterintuitive, bristles with insight and implication." (A.O. Scott New York Times 20120425)
A celebrated novelist, poet, and critic, Atwood has combined rigorous analysis, wide-ranging erudition, and a beguilingly playful imagination to produce the most probing and thought-stirring commentary on the financial crisis to date. (John Gray New York Review of Books 20090401)
...a fascinating, freewheeling examination of ideas of debt, balance and revenge in history, society and literature - Atwood has again struck upon our most current anxieties. (London Times Online 20081008)
Atwood's book is a weird but wonderful melange of personal reminiscences, literary walkabout, moral preachment, timely political argument, economic history and theological query, all bound together with wry wit and careful though casual-seeming research. (Publishers Weekly 20080908)
Inside This Book
(Learn More)
What Other Items Do Customers Buy After Viewing This Item?
Customer Reviews
Most helpful customer reviews
17 of 20 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback
Given the current worldwide economic situation, it appears rather prescient that the 2008 Massey Lectures are on the subject of debt. In these lectures, Margaret Atwood provides an examination of the concept of debt as a motif in human society, particularly through an examination of the metaphors of debt in western literature. As such, this book only obliquely deals with monetary debts. Rather, the focus is on the more general idea of debt in relation to justice, sin, redemption, balance, and revenge, among other topics.
Atwood begins with the notion of debt and its relationship to fairness, which is ingrained in the psyche of the human race (and other intelligent creatures). In early societies, she describes how notions of debt are aligned with justice, typically represented by a supernatural female figure. It is the emergence of Greece, and the induction of the court system described in Aeschylus' Oresteia, that the idea of a female arbiter of fairness/justice (and thus of debt) is replaced.
Next, Atwood describes the links between debt and sin. In heaven, debts are forgiven; in hell, debts are eternally paid back. The character of Satan is described as a collector of debts, and is often shown with a ledger or balance sheets. With these notions of debt and sin, the creditor is often seen to be as sinful as the debtor, particularly in pre-industrial literature. Moreover, motifs of debt are always twinned with motifs of credit, one symbiotic with the other.
In the lecture on "Debt as plot", Atwood examines the characters of Faust (as exemplified by Marlowe's Doctor Faustus, in particular) and Scrooge (of Dickens's Christmas Carol). In a fascinating section, she asks if Dickens wrote Scrooge as a reverse characterization of Faust:
"Was Dickens consciously writing Scrooge as a reverse Faustus? ... There are so many correspondences it is hard to avoid the thought: Faustus longs to fly through the air and visit distant times and places, Scrooge dreads it, both do it. Both have clerks - Wagner and Bob Cratchit - the one treated well by Faustus, the other treated badly by Scrooge. Marley is Scrooge's Mephistopheles figure who carries his own Hell around with him... Everything Faustus does, Scrooge does backwards."
As someone who has been studying variations of the Faust legend for over a decade, I found this digression fascinating. Indeed, the characters of Scrooge and Faust loom large over all of the lectures.
An examination of the shadow side of debt described in the title focuses on the ideas of punishment, resentment, and revenge, among others. The endless cycles of revenge and counter-revenge exemplified in the myth of the house of Atreus is shown as analogous to cycles of debt and credit: one is a moral debt, the other a financial one. The solutions to both are laws (as exemplified in the Oresteia) or forgiveness (as exemplified by South Africa's Truth and Reconciliation Commission). Forgiveness can break non-ending cycles of moral debt and financial debt. The shadow side of the debtor is the creditor: hence we have Faust/Mephistopheles, Scrooge/Cratchit, and Antonio/Shylock. It was inevitable that a treatment of the motif of debt would include an analysis of The Merchant of Venice, and Atwood succeeds
Payback is associated with redemption, and requires recognition on the debtor's part of the debt incurred. In the concluding lecture, Atwood returns to Scrooge. Recognizing two archetypes in the Dickens tale (Scrooge Original, before his redemption, and Scrooge Lite, after his redemption), she introduces a third archetype: Scrooge Nouveaux. This twenty-first century Scrooge is an annoyingly narcissistic modern businessperson, both astoundingly rich and astoundingly ignorant. This Scrooge is visited not by the spirits of Christmas past, present, and future, but the spirits of Earth Day past, present, and future. At this point, the narrative moves into a strong focus ecological ethics and the role of debt. The debtor, Scrooge Nouveaux, is a stand-in for all of us and our negligent razing of the planet, racking up an enormous amount of ecological debt from our creditor. We can either start to pay back through sustainable and ethical practices and receive the forgiveness of Gaia, or proceed with business as usual and face her revenge. As Scrooge Nouveaux begins the new day after the nocturnal visit of the three spirits, he thinks:
"I don't really own anything... Not even my body. Everything I have is only borrowed. I'm not really rich at all, I'm heavily in debt. How do I even begin to pay back what I owe? Where should I start?"
Scrooge's thoughts apply to all of us. Where shall we begin?
Atwood begins with the notion of debt and its relationship to fairness, which is ingrained in the psyche of the human race (and other intelligent creatures). In early societies, she describes how notions of debt are aligned with justice, typically represented by a supernatural female figure. It is the emergence of Greece, and the induction of the court system described in Aeschylus' Oresteia, that the idea of a female arbiter of fairness/justice (and thus of debt) is replaced.
Next, Atwood describes the links between debt and sin. In heaven, debts are forgiven; in hell, debts are eternally paid back. The character of Satan is described as a collector of debts, and is often shown with a ledger or balance sheets. With these notions of debt and sin, the creditor is often seen to be as sinful as the debtor, particularly in pre-industrial literature. Moreover, motifs of debt are always twinned with motifs of credit, one symbiotic with the other.
In the lecture on "Debt as plot", Atwood examines the characters of Faust (as exemplified by Marlowe's Doctor Faustus, in particular) and Scrooge (of Dickens's Christmas Carol). In a fascinating section, she asks if Dickens wrote Scrooge as a reverse characterization of Faust:
"Was Dickens consciously writing Scrooge as a reverse Faustus? ... There are so many correspondences it is hard to avoid the thought: Faustus longs to fly through the air and visit distant times and places, Scrooge dreads it, both do it. Both have clerks - Wagner and Bob Cratchit - the one treated well by Faustus, the other treated badly by Scrooge. Marley is Scrooge's Mephistopheles figure who carries his own Hell around with him... Everything Faustus does, Scrooge does backwards."
As someone who has been studying variations of the Faust legend for over a decade, I found this digression fascinating. Indeed, the characters of Scrooge and Faust loom large over all of the lectures.
An examination of the shadow side of debt described in the title focuses on the ideas of punishment, resentment, and revenge, among others. The endless cycles of revenge and counter-revenge exemplified in the myth of the house of Atreus is shown as analogous to cycles of debt and credit: one is a moral debt, the other a financial one. The solutions to both are laws (as exemplified in the Oresteia) or forgiveness (as exemplified by South Africa's Truth and Reconciliation Commission). Forgiveness can break non-ending cycles of moral debt and financial debt. The shadow side of the debtor is the creditor: hence we have Faust/Mephistopheles, Scrooge/Cratchit, and Antonio/Shylock. It was inevitable that a treatment of the motif of debt would include an analysis of The Merchant of Venice, and Atwood succeeds
Payback is associated with redemption, and requires recognition on the debtor's part of the debt incurred. In the concluding lecture, Atwood returns to Scrooge. Recognizing two archetypes in the Dickens tale (Scrooge Original, before his redemption, and Scrooge Lite, after his redemption), she introduces a third archetype: Scrooge Nouveaux. This twenty-first century Scrooge is an annoyingly narcissistic modern businessperson, both astoundingly rich and astoundingly ignorant. This Scrooge is visited not by the spirits of Christmas past, present, and future, but the spirits of Earth Day past, present, and future. At this point, the narrative moves into a strong focus ecological ethics and the role of debt. The debtor, Scrooge Nouveaux, is a stand-in for all of us and our negligent razing of the planet, racking up an enormous amount of ecological debt from our creditor. We can either start to pay back through sustainable and ethical practices and receive the forgiveness of Gaia, or proceed with business as usual and face her revenge. As Scrooge Nouveaux begins the new day after the nocturnal visit of the three spirits, he thinks:
"I don't really own anything... Not even my body. Everything I have is only borrowed. I'm not really rich at all, I'm heavily in debt. How do I even begin to pay back what I owe? Where should I start?"
Scrooge's thoughts apply to all of us. Where shall we begin?
7 of 8 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback
If Margaret Atwood had written Payback in order to pay off a debt like Charles Dickens is said to have been motivated to write A Christmas Carol, perhaps it would have turned out be a better book.
Perhaps if she'd had another year to write it: originally her Massey lecture was scheduled for 2009 but was brought forward when a conflict emerged with the publication date of her next novel.
As it turned out, Payback: Debt and The Shadow Side Wealth, is somewhat like a character in a novel itself; caught up in circumstance, a hero determined to change the course of events yet doomed to fail by a tragic flaw.
A tragic flaw may or may not be known to the protagonist and in this case, Atwood is acutely aware of it. Still, she plods on as she tragically must, determined to fashion an answer to what was, a year or two ago when she started crafting her arguments, no more than a glimmer of pending economic crisis.
Atwood chooses Dickens' Scrooge for the model of her redemption story, contriving Scrooge Nouveau, a worldly, corporate, media savvy version of Dickens' original, and a capitalist with a keener eye for self-interest than the old miser ever had.
But like Dickens' Scrooge, Atwood's Nouveau version finds redemption to be a relatively free ride; it comes at no real cost to himself; he is more than able to share his enormous wealth. Like Dickens, Atwood advocates personal, internal, even spiritual change. Adopting an attitude of service to others, or the earth as Atwood suggests, serves everyone better, including oneself. It's a slight of hand accomplished by looking at everything one has, even one's body, as borrowed.
Atwood's Scrooge parable is the fifth and final chapter of Payback, and surprising because there is no payback, no belt-tightening, no hard choices, no revenge and no sacrifice, even after the four previous meticulously researched chapters show how the debt 'story' or narrative always involves a payback, a literal paying back of what has been borrowed, or a symbolic and often vengeful payback, extracting a price for a moral wrong, often from the usurious creditor. In either case, the story of debt always involves loss: of homes, relationships, jobs, even lives.
History shows no compassion in balancing the scales.
So it seems odd that the sardonic, intellectual Atwood would fashion a happy ending in which no one gets hurt. Like Dickens, Atwood's outcome lacks the tragedy of real payback. Unlike Dickens, it lacks the fireside warmth of reconciliation. The result is unconvincing. Though like Dickens, Atwood's somewhat Disney-like ending is likely to serve. Literary critics have puzzled over Dickens enormous popularity and commercial success despite being an outspoken political critic. Perhaps it was because he could only imagine individual solutions to problems that he also saw as arising out of individual failings. The individual is after all, no matter his or her political stripe, the basic building block of capital.
Payback achieves Atwood's ambitious goal, to examine 'debt as a human construct ' that peculiar nexus where money, narrative or story, and religious belief intersect'' She shows convincingly how debt is a story we tell ourselves over and over again, the story of how we are all dependent on one another, connected by exchange, one person owes another person, or God, or the Earth. The actors, debtor and creditor, and the price extracted, change over time, each version telling us heaps about the people who wrote the story with how they lived.
Yet, what Payback fails to do is paint a picture of human folly and redemption in terms adequate to the scale and scope to the social and systemic crisis we are facing. The Dickensian world has been superseded by a global one of mass media and public and private institutions so large as to be unimaginable in his time. Of course, it is too much to ask of any artist, even if they are more observant, sensitive, tuned in than most folks. Artists may indeed be prescient but cannot be expected to be oracles. And in fairness, Atwood drops hints here and there about interesting 'outside the box' type solutions like debt cancellation, which at this point we must imagine leaders and bankers around the world to have put in play billions and trillions of dollars in order to effect.
In his Salon review of Payback, Louis Bayard pretty much nails the problems mentioned here, in particular the cheesy Scrooge Nouveau ending. Perhaps the book was brought out too soon, driven by circumstance, or even the avarice of a publisher quite possibly giddy with their good fortune to have in hand something like a first person account from the cliff edge of the lemmings charging over. At publication date, the full extent of the economic crash still wasn't clear (it's still not) and Atwood's lecture would have been conceived and written months before when everyone still thought the environment was the No. 1 issue facing humankind. It's a bit like Stephan Dion's Green Shift in the recent Canadian election; a program years in the making, diligently crafted, intelligent, yet effortlessly blindsided by the economy and a Conservative 'be happy, don't worry' sort of non-engagement.
Payback is a story that needs a new ending. Better still, a new ending written every few years (or months at the current pace of change). If debt will always be with us, what becomes critical is who writes its story, particularly the ending.
Notes, references and other stuff:
This review was first posted at http://www.readingart.ca
The most delightful insight of Payback is Atwood's itemization of the possible responses to debt catastrophe: Protect Yourself, Give Up and Party, Help Others, Blame, Bear Witness and Go About Your Life. While one might ask whether these are as well-documented as Kulbler-Ross's stages of mourning, intuitively they feel right, giving pause to reflect on just where you are at personally, how are you reacting, coping.
One hates to quibble but in such a prestigious volume as a Massey Lecture, but it would have been nice if someone at Anansi had proofread the book using more than spell check. And the index overlooks at least one page with the Dickens' name on it.
Louis Bayard's Salon review:
http://www.salon.com/books/review/2008/10/28/payback/
The original Scrooge tale is now in the public domain, from which it continues to produce income for somebody:
http://www.alexlib.com/A_Christmas_Carol/A_Chritsmas_Carol.htm
and
http://www.lulu.com/content/339474
On the tragic hero, generally:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tragic_hero
On the Massey Lectures timing switcheroo:
http://www.macleans.ca/canada/national/article.jsp?content=20081001_11026_11026&page=1
Perhaps if she'd had another year to write it: originally her Massey lecture was scheduled for 2009 but was brought forward when a conflict emerged with the publication date of her next novel.
As it turned out, Payback: Debt and The Shadow Side Wealth, is somewhat like a character in a novel itself; caught up in circumstance, a hero determined to change the course of events yet doomed to fail by a tragic flaw.
A tragic flaw may or may not be known to the protagonist and in this case, Atwood is acutely aware of it. Still, she plods on as she tragically must, determined to fashion an answer to what was, a year or two ago when she started crafting her arguments, no more than a glimmer of pending economic crisis.
Atwood chooses Dickens' Scrooge for the model of her redemption story, contriving Scrooge Nouveau, a worldly, corporate, media savvy version of Dickens' original, and a capitalist with a keener eye for self-interest than the old miser ever had.
But like Dickens' Scrooge, Atwood's Nouveau version finds redemption to be a relatively free ride; it comes at no real cost to himself; he is more than able to share his enormous wealth. Like Dickens, Atwood advocates personal, internal, even spiritual change. Adopting an attitude of service to others, or the earth as Atwood suggests, serves everyone better, including oneself. It's a slight of hand accomplished by looking at everything one has, even one's body, as borrowed.
Atwood's Scrooge parable is the fifth and final chapter of Payback, and surprising because there is no payback, no belt-tightening, no hard choices, no revenge and no sacrifice, even after the four previous meticulously researched chapters show how the debt 'story' or narrative always involves a payback, a literal paying back of what has been borrowed, or a symbolic and often vengeful payback, extracting a price for a moral wrong, often from the usurious creditor. In either case, the story of debt always involves loss: of homes, relationships, jobs, even lives.
History shows no compassion in balancing the scales.
So it seems odd that the sardonic, intellectual Atwood would fashion a happy ending in which no one gets hurt. Like Dickens, Atwood's outcome lacks the tragedy of real payback. Unlike Dickens, it lacks the fireside warmth of reconciliation. The result is unconvincing. Though like Dickens, Atwood's somewhat Disney-like ending is likely to serve. Literary critics have puzzled over Dickens enormous popularity and commercial success despite being an outspoken political critic. Perhaps it was because he could only imagine individual solutions to problems that he also saw as arising out of individual failings. The individual is after all, no matter his or her political stripe, the basic building block of capital.
Payback achieves Atwood's ambitious goal, to examine 'debt as a human construct ' that peculiar nexus where money, narrative or story, and religious belief intersect'' She shows convincingly how debt is a story we tell ourselves over and over again, the story of how we are all dependent on one another, connected by exchange, one person owes another person, or God, or the Earth. The actors, debtor and creditor, and the price extracted, change over time, each version telling us heaps about the people who wrote the story with how they lived.
Yet, what Payback fails to do is paint a picture of human folly and redemption in terms adequate to the scale and scope to the social and systemic crisis we are facing. The Dickensian world has been superseded by a global one of mass media and public and private institutions so large as to be unimaginable in his time. Of course, it is too much to ask of any artist, even if they are more observant, sensitive, tuned in than most folks. Artists may indeed be prescient but cannot be expected to be oracles. And in fairness, Atwood drops hints here and there about interesting 'outside the box' type solutions like debt cancellation, which at this point we must imagine leaders and bankers around the world to have put in play billions and trillions of dollars in order to effect.
In his Salon review of Payback, Louis Bayard pretty much nails the problems mentioned here, in particular the cheesy Scrooge Nouveau ending. Perhaps the book was brought out too soon, driven by circumstance, or even the avarice of a publisher quite possibly giddy with their good fortune to have in hand something like a first person account from the cliff edge of the lemmings charging over. At publication date, the full extent of the economic crash still wasn't clear (it's still not) and Atwood's lecture would have been conceived and written months before when everyone still thought the environment was the No. 1 issue facing humankind. It's a bit like Stephan Dion's Green Shift in the recent Canadian election; a program years in the making, diligently crafted, intelligent, yet effortlessly blindsided by the economy and a Conservative 'be happy, don't worry' sort of non-engagement.
Payback is a story that needs a new ending. Better still, a new ending written every few years (or months at the current pace of change). If debt will always be with us, what becomes critical is who writes its story, particularly the ending.
Notes, references and other stuff:
This review was first posted at http://www.readingart.ca
The most delightful insight of Payback is Atwood's itemization of the possible responses to debt catastrophe: Protect Yourself, Give Up and Party, Help Others, Blame, Bear Witness and Go About Your Life. While one might ask whether these are as well-documented as Kulbler-Ross's stages of mourning, intuitively they feel right, giving pause to reflect on just where you are at personally, how are you reacting, coping.
One hates to quibble but in such a prestigious volume as a Massey Lecture, but it would have been nice if someone at Anansi had proofread the book using more than spell check. And the index overlooks at least one page with the Dickens' name on it.
Louis Bayard's Salon review:
http://www.salon.com/books/review/2008/10/28/payback/
The original Scrooge tale is now in the public domain, from which it continues to produce income for somebody:
http://www.alexlib.com/A_Christmas_Carol/A_Chritsmas_Carol.htm
and
http://www.lulu.com/content/339474
On the tragic hero, generally:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tragic_hero
On the Massey Lectures timing switcheroo:
http://www.macleans.ca/canada/national/article.jsp?content=20081001_11026_11026&page=1
5 of 6 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback
Ms. Atwood has been an icon of Canadian literature since Methuselah (aka 'I') was a boy. Her books have been required reading in our schools for almost 5 decades and she is rightly seen as one of our National treasures in literature...... but.....when it comes to economics, environmentalism and surprisingly even modern morality she is a dilettante at the seniors home.
This was a disappointing read. i had heard part of her interview on CBC about this book and i had hoped for so much more. The potential for insight was so much more than was realized on the page.
This was a disappointing read. i had heard part of her interview on CBC about this book and i had hoped for so much more. The potential for insight was so much more than was realized on the page.
Want to see more reviews on this item?
›
Go to Amazon.com to see all 27 reviews
4.4 out of 5 stars
Most recent customer reviews
5.0 out of 5 stars
Masterpiece, as usual
If, like me, you love all things Margaret Atwood, you'll really enjoy this piece of nonfiction, a collection of the Massey lectures. Margaret Atwood is brilliant, as always.
Published 5 months ago by Amanda
4.0 out of 5 stars
An outstanding read
Ms. Atwood's Payback turns from well-researched essay to polemic which spoils an otherwise outstanding contemplation of debt and credit in all its complexities and ramifications. Read more
Published on Dec 28 2009 by Len
1.0 out of 5 stars
Had potential, but a poor finish
The book starts out with 3 very well written, well researched chapters that explore the concept of debt in a historical, religous and literary context. Read more
Published on Nov 27 2009 by Westjeff
5.0 out of 5 stars
The Power of Debt in History
When I first picked up Atwood's essays-lectures on the subject of debt, I was skeptical that she, a renown Canadian writer and social thinker, would have anything important to say... Read more
Published on May 14 2009 by Ian Gordon Malcomson
5.0 out of 5 stars
Lyrical, Literary, Low-down on Debt
I expected this book to be a fictional story of some sort.
I expected to be taken into a world of characters experiencing and
suffering some kind of karmic chaos for... Read more
I expected to be taken into a world of characters experiencing and
suffering some kind of karmic chaos for... Read more
Published on May 1 2009 by Amazong
3.0 out of 5 stars
Sell your TV
Fine writing, yes but no new insights. Concept of debt is closely tied to a concept of "working for the man" and being in a dependent relationship. Read more
Published on April 18 2009 by SD
2.0 out of 5 stars
Mindless fun
Have you ever wondered about the phrase; "The jig is up!" (What is a jig anyway?)? Is the etymology of mortgage unknown to you? Read more
Published on April 13 2009 by RondoReader
4.0 out of 5 stars
Interesting But No New Insights
I guess it would be a stretch to expect something revolutionary about economics from a literary writer. Read more
Published on April 7 2009 by Coach C
5.0 out of 5 stars
Payback and its tmiing
Margaret Atwood at her best. The discussion of "debt" and its subtle meanings is fascinating. We all have some approach to money and its energy and this small books offers... Read more
Published on Mar 15 2009 by M. Pinault
4.0 out of 5 stars
Debtor or Creditor: Who is the bad guy
Natural Law, Science, and the Social Construction of Reality
Margaret Atwood has produced a very entertaining look at the role of debt in a cultural and historical... Read more
Margaret Atwood has produced a very entertaining look at the role of debt in a cultural and historical... Read more
Published on Dec 25 2008 by Bernie Koenig
Listmania!
|
|
Look for similar items by category
- Books > Business & Investing > Economics > Economic Conditions
- Books > Business & Investing > Economics > Economic History
- Books > Business & Investing > Personal Finance > Budgeting & Money Management
- Books > Business & Investing > Personal Finance > Credit Ratings & Repair
- Books > Politics & Social Sciences > Social Sciences > Anthropology > Cultural
- Books > Politics & Social Sciences > Social Sciences > Folklore & Mythology
- Books > Politics & Social Sciences > Social Sciences > Sociology
- Books > Professional & Technical > Accounting & Finance > Economics > Economic Conditions
- Books > Professional & Technical > Accounting & Finance > Economics > Economic History
Feedback
Would you like to update product info or give feedback on images?
|
